Sunday, November 18, 2012

Good news on the climate-change front: A shift from coal to natural gas by U.S. power plants — made possible by the drilling technology known as fracking — has cut the nation’s planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions by 500 megatons a year.According to Foreign Policy magazine, that’s roughly double the impact of all the climate-change agreements signed everywhere in the world over the past 20 years. Combined.What’s more, complying with those treaties has added a whopping $250 billion to the price of energy worldwide.Switching to cleaner-burning natural gas, by contrast, actually cut costs for Americans — to the tune of $100 billion annually.Meanwhile, the new abundance of comparatively cheap energy is spurring growth in U.S. manufacturing — and the creation of much-needed jobs.Fracking technology is also boosting domestic oil production, putting the United States on a path to overtake Saudi Arabia in the black-gold business by 2020.So fracking holds the promise of slowing global warming, saving money, boosting the economy and improving national security.